Deadly Tunnel Vision in Iraq

by
Holly Sklar

Dissident
Voice
November 3, 2003

Spending
more money can help plenty of things, but it can't win an unwinnable war. This
lesson came at great cost in dollars and deaths in Vietnam. With more lies
found and more lives lost everyday, the United States needs an exit strategy
for Iraq, not an $87 billion escalation.

Only
those with tunnel vision see light at the end of this tunnel.

"In
the beginning I was into this; we all were," U.S. Army Specialist Juan
Castillo told the New York Times while home from Iraq on a two-week furlough.
"We haven't found anything, no weapons of mass destruction, no Saddam, no
nothing. And the people there hate us...We're conquerors to them. It wasn't
supposed to be like that."

Just
15 percent of Iraqis see U.S. troops as a liberating force and 67 percent see
them as occupiers, according to a recent poll by the Iraq Center for Research
and Strategic Studies. Nearly half think conditions for peace and stability
have worsened over the past three months; 18 percent think they are the same.
That was before the recent wave of attacks.

By
May 1, when President Bush portrayed "Mission accomplished" from a
carrier deck, 139 U.S. soldiers were dead. On July 2, with the death toll at
205, Bush said, "There are some who feel like the conditions are such that
they can attack us there. My answer is: Bring 'em on." And on they've
come.

According
to the U.S. commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, attacks on troops have
jumped from 10-15 a day over the summer to 20-35 a day since early October.
More than 350 U.S. soldiers are dead and more than 2,000 have been wounded.
About 20 percent of the wounds are severe brain injuries. Thousands of Iraqis
have died.

October
27 was the bloodiest day in Baghdad since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, with
more than 200 dead or wounded in a wave of coordinated suicide bombings. The
day before, rockets hit the hotel in the heavily fortified zone where Deputy
Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was staying.

The
Bush administration ignored warnings leading up to the 9/11 attacks and is
still ignoring warnings now. An American official "said the military had
specific intelligence of an imminent attack on the hotel, the Rashid, where
senior personnel of the American occupation live and eat, but that no special
precautions had been taken," the New York Times reports.

The
spin machine continues to spam the American public with wishful thinking. Chief
civilian administrator in Iraq Paul Bremer insists, "The overall thrust is
in the right direction, and the good days outnumber the bad days."

Senator
Robert Byrd of West Virginia had it right, invoking the Hans Christian Andersen
tale, "The Emperor's New Clothes," in a speech opposing the $87
billion supplemental. "Those who have dared to expose the nakedness of the
Administration's policies in Iraq have been subjected to scorn...[and] had our
patriotism questioned," Byrd said. "The Emperor has no clothes. This
entire adventure in Iraq has been based on propaganda and manipulation."

Incredibly,
the emperor's fabric has been exposed as fabrication, but the policy marches
on.

The
Bush administration is making wrong choice after wrong choice.

It
transformed global solidarity after 9/11 into global outrage by bullying the
United Nations, insulting "old Europe" and inventing an imminent
threat to camouflage an Iraq invasion senior officials had desired long before
9/11.

It
shifted resources away from Afghanistan and the fight against Al Qaeda and
other terrorist groups. The Taliban is regrouping and Bin Laden, the epitome of
blowback from the old U.S.-supported Mujahedeen war against the Russians, leads
a resurgent Al Qaeda.

It
is shortchanging "homeland security" while goldplating contracts for
U.S. war profiteers in Iraq. Police, firefighters and other public health and
safety personnel are laid off in budget cutbacks while wealthy campaign
contributors get tax cuts. Airport security remains inadequate, and other
potential targets are even more unprotected, from shipping ports to chemical
plants.

The
longer the U.S. occupation of Iraq, the more resistance and resentment will
grow, and the more likely Iraq will see civil war rather than peaceful
reconstruction. The United Nations, not the United States, must oversee the
reconstruction aid and restoration of Iraqi self-governance.